


Sweet Cats For Her

by perspiring worry (aPaperCupCut)



Series: Original Short Stories [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Cats, Horror, Other, Short Story, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-20
Updated: 2017-04-20
Packaged: 2018-10-21 05:08:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10678320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aPaperCupCut/pseuds/perspiring%20worry
Summary: An Edgar Allan Poe type of story, with cats and the witching hour. An original short story I wrote a while back.





	Sweet Cats For Her

 My cat had never been a particularly violent creature; her nature was warmth and softness, soothing and gentle. Quite elderly, it had been a delightful surprise to me that she held that same quiet companionship, still curling next to me every night, for many of her last years.

 

So to say her sudden and drastic change in behavior was unexpected was an understatement; I was shocked. Her temper sharpened, her patience ebbed away like eroding limestone. Instead of greeting me with purrs and eagerly joining me while I read, she shot toward me every evening, biting my offered hands and raking her claws along my legs. She growled and hissed, fussing over the food she once ate wholeheartedly and starving herself out of spite.

 

She chased away my nephews, whom she’d once adored and whom had adored her; several times she deserted the house, missing in action for days and weeks at a time.

 

Neighbors reported that she attacked their own pets, and my family told me repeatedly to rid myself of the burden.

 

But I couldn’t just evict her from my life, from my heart; she had been a faithful friend to me, giving an unbiased ear to me and comforting me at my lowest. I couldn’t do something like that to my beloved friend.

 

I tried a local vet, hoping that she was just aging badly and needed a change in diet. But the vet immediately told me that there was no discernible cause; she was as healthy as she could be in her later years, and her change in temperament, while very unprecedented, was something I could not change.

 

There was nothing I could do.

 

She began yowling at night, spitting at me with hackles raised every morning, refusing to eat anything except food I hand fed her (taking the opportunity to bite me).

 

I had nightmares about her, seeing things every time I awoke in the night, afraid of seeing even the slightest flash of white hair. Her beautiful blue eyes, once so bright and smiling, now glared at me, sharpened by unknown slights. The house I had lived in and had loved for years became like a cemetery to me, cold and unfamiliar.

 

My job was a waking night terror, filled with constant shuddering hands and unpleasant, disapproving coworkers. Where before I had taken enjoyment out of my work, I now dreaded everything.

 

What once were just simple nightmares escalated quickly; sleep could not come to me, and when it did I would awaken abruptly, feverish and sweating. My cousins refused to visit, and my nephews refused to speak to me. The whole street avoided me, keeping clear of my home as though it were haunted.

 

As my life crumbled around me, I found that the one I had refused so steadfastly in the beginning to abandon was growing increasingly smug and arrogant. Her once wise bearing and kind countenance, tainted by some unnamed specter, now twisted into haughtiness and lying ceasefires. She would leap onto my lap, pushing whatever that was in my hands away, rubbing her grinning face against my chest before cutting into my arms with her small yellow fangs.

 

My only consolation for such an experience was that, two years after she seemingly lost her mind, she died of old age.

 

That night haunts me still. She had lain herself across my chest as I slept, wakening me with tightening claws every time my eyes slid shut.

 

The witching hour had come; we were deeply embraced into it. And still I did not sleep - her glowing, icy eyes remained locked onto me, her threatening knives pressing into my belly and breast. My sight seemed to waver; I was half delusional after years of such harassment. I’d lost my job a month ago, and had tried, ever since, to sleep. This night, like every night since then, bore down on me in the form of the bleached demon, grinning fangs and intense, leering eyes a mockery of normality.

 

But this night was unlike all the nights previous. This night, as the witching hour slowly died and as the Earth waited in hovering anticipation for the sun’s blessed warmth, random happenstance seemed to sink its cold eyes into me and finally, mercifully, relent.

 

A soft sound echoed throughout the graveyard of the night. Her luminous ears sunk low against her skull. Voluminous eyes narrowed, lips curling in an enraged sneer. Her sight locked against my window, her tail twitching and hackles rising. She stiffened, like a corpse long forgotten in the catacombs.

 

A low, horrific sound rose from deep within her ribs; I felt the rumble of it against my lungs, my breath shallow and my mind muddled and confused.

 

She lifted her gnarled and cursed frame from my limp person - and then fell, silent and sudden, off my bed.

 

I did not dare cast my gaze to her, and remained, still, until the sun broke whatever spell that soft whisper had cast.

 

She lay prone, unmoving. No breath escaped her, no rise of her torso to indicate life.

 

I knelt beside her, already certain of her condition.

 

Dead and lifeless.

 

No relief came to me, no victory. I was numb; had been for a long time. It is a wrongful assumption to believe I ever recovered; even now, as I lay here upon this bed, just as still as she had been, I still feel numb.

 

I still feel the cold that crept into my bones that morning, still hear the whispers every night, still wake from my sleep exhausted and sweating. I miss that nightmare, if only because I could believe my friend was still there, beside me, listening and offering comfort for my torment. I could deny the husk that had replaced her.

 


End file.
